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Miami Marlins fans have reason to cheer even before this week's start of spring training with reports unpopular owner Jeffrey Loria has a handshake agreement to sell the team for $1.6 billion. Adding intrigue: One ownership group bidding to buy the Marlins has ties to President Trump.

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Parents of two men on Jose Fernandez’ boat sue pitcher’s estate for $2 million each.

The parents of Eduardo Rivero and Emilio Jesus Macias, the two men on the boat with Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez when it crashed, killing all on board, are suing the 24-year-old’s estate, according to the Sun Sentinel.

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April 3-9: After starting in about 3/8 of Marlins games in 2016 Ichiro Suzuki does not get a start for the Marlins in the opening week's 6 games.
HE APPEARS IN THE OUTFIELD DEFENSIVELY FOR ONLY ONE INNING.
Now that he's reached 3,000 hits is he being phased out?

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Former GOP candidate, Yankee captain reportedly teaming up to buy team
Jeffrey Loria looking to sell franchise he purchased for $158.5m in 2002.

Jeb Bush and Derek Jeter have reportedly teamed up in a bid to buy the Miami Marlins.

The former Florida governor will combine resources with the longtime New York Yankees captain in an effort to purchase the team from owner Jeffrey Loria, the Miami Herald reported on Wednesday citing sources familiar with the negotiations.Bush and Jeter, who were previously in the market for the National League club, have strong competition from New York financier and Quogue Capital manager Wayne Rothbaum.

Loria, a former New York art dealer who purchased the Marlins for $158.5m in 2002, had a handshake agreement to sell the team for $1.6bn to the family of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and White House adviser to president Donald Trump.

That deal was scuttled after Loria’s name emerged as a candidate for the US ambassadorship to France, lest both parties be susceptible to accusations of quid pro quo.

Both Bush and Jeter have residences in Florida. Bush, whose bid for the GOP’s presidential nomination came up short in last year’s promaries, lives in Coral Gables, while Jeter, a 14-time All-Star who retired from baseball three years ago after spending the entirety of his career with the Yankees, has a house in Tampa.

Former US president George W Bush, Jeb’s elder brother, owned a controlling share of the American League’s Texas Rangers from 1989 through 1998, serving as the team’s managing general partner for five years.

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Derek Jeter won the auction for the Miami Marlins, but you already knew that. In fact, the moment you heard Jeter was involved in a group pursuing the purchase of the Marlins, you probably figured muscle memory would rule the day and that No. 2 would finish No. 1.

Jeter wins. It's what he does -- in baseball, in business, in life, in love. How many people on the face of the earth are better at something than Derek Jeter is at winning?

Jeter is even dragging his partner, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, toward the finish line. The group, which is led by Bush, won exclusive negotiating rights with a $1.3 billion bid, according to multiple media reports, but there is still no contract, and the sale would need approval from Major League Baseball.

Jeb Bush couldn't win the White House as brother George W. Bush did. But with Jeter at his side, he has a chance to win the World Series title his brother couldn't as owner of the Texas Rangers.

Of course, this surprises absolutely nobody. Derek Jeter told his grade school teachers he would become a big league ballplayer, and those teachers told his parents their son needed more realistic goals. Jeter became a big league ballplayer.

Derek Jeter told his youth baseball and basketball teammates in Kalamazoo, Michigan, that he would become a New York Yankee, and they thought those were wild, big-city dreams. Jeter became a Yankee as the sixth pick in the 1992 draft after the Cincinnati Reds decided, at the last second, that Chad Mottola was the better call as the fifth pick.

Derek Jeter told his minor league teammate and friend, R.D. Long, that he would never allow the Yankees to use his dizzying number of errors as a reason to move him from shortstop to the outfield. Jeter became a lifer at shortstop.

Derek Jeter told reporters and fans and everyone else who asked that his primary post-playing mission was to become an owner. And voila, a little more than two seasons after he delivered his final Yankee Stadium hit as a 40-year-old -- a miraculous game-winner, you'll recall -- he stands on the doorstep of MLB ownership. His first manager could be Don Mattingly, of all people.

Mattingly was the Yankee captain who one spring training day famously advised the novice Jeter, busy walking off an empty back field, to always run on or off a ball field, "because you never know who's watching you." Jeter ran out everything for the rest of his baseball life, building his iconic career around a relentless drive that ultimately wore out his opponents. He developed into a first-ballot Hall of Famer on grit and resourcefulness more than he did on talent, and that will serve him well as an executive trying for the first time to win like a Yankee without the benefit of a Yankee payroll.

Jeter's teams won 22 postseason series -- 22 -- including five World Series titles. He had a lot of help in the form of Mariano Rivera, Joe Torre, the Pettittes and Bernies and Tinos and Paulies and Posadas. And every last one of those Yankees will tell you their championship seasons revolved around the shortstop and his willingness to grind through injuries, through everything, in the ultimate grinders' sport. Jeter was to the Yankees' dynasty almost what Tom Brady is to the New England Patriots'.

So you should go ahead and bet that "Captain Intangibles" will make a tangible difference if he ends up in an executive suite in Miami, where the Marlins are trying to break a streak of seven consecutive losing seasons. The franchise has managed 18 losing seasons out of 24 but has won two championships along the way, including the 2003 World Series at Jeter's expense. It has been a bizarre run defined by bizarre and destructive ownership choices. Jeter was pretty good at cleaning up George Steinbrenner's messes, and the experience will surely help him clean up Jeffrey Loria's.

This much is certain: If his Marlins ever win the World Series, Jeter won't race onto the field and make an amateur-hour dash around the bases like Loria did in the old Yankee Stadium in 2003, right after Josh Beckett made the home team look like a junior high squad from the Bronx. Jeter will act like he's been there before, because, you know, he has.

When MLB owners get around to approving this sale -- and who among them wouldn't want to trade Jeffrey Loria for Derek Jeter? -- Loria will walk away with $1.3 billion, a pretty good return on his $158 million investment in 2002. But baseball is the big winner here. Commissioner Rob Manfred didn't want his most marketable retired player spending the rest of his second career managing a website for athletes. If the Steinbrenners weren't going to give him a piece of the family business, baseball wanted Jeter to do what was once unthinkable: trade the pinstripes for a new uniform.

Sure, Jeb Bush is officially the rich guy lording over a circle of rich-guy investors. But when he isn't asking Jeter about some of his 3,465 hits, or about the instinct and artistry that shaped his forever 2001 flip play, he should be smart enough to sit back and let a born winner tell him how to build a winning campaign.

In the end, expect Jeter to be the one to finally land Jeb in the White House -- to celebrate his championship with this president or the next one.